iKlaug Voices 



BY 



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PRESS OF 
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

PHILADELPHIA 
1904 



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Copyright, 1904 

BY 

Charles Carroll Albirtson 



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Contents 



PAGE 

Many Voices 5 

Whithersoever the River Cometh . . 21 

The Everlasting God 37 

Elijah the Reformer ...... 53 

A Large Place 67 

If Thou Faint 85 



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IWaitg Voices 



" There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices 
in the world, and none of them is without signifi- 
cation." (I Corinthians xiv. 10.) 

Among the phenomena that attended the 
Apostolic Church was one known as " the 
gift of tongues." Persons possessing this 
gift were moved to speak in language no 
one understood. It was a strange and 
mystifying thing. And it was so easily 
simulated that there is reason to believe 
it brought confusion into more than one 
society. Paul did not deny the genuine- 
ness of the gift, but he did not encourage 
it. In the chapter from which the text is 
taken he exhorts the Corinthian Christians 
to cultivate the more practical power of 
7 



MANY VOICES 

interpreting the Scriptures. He argues 
that there is a twofold purpose in Chris- 
tian speech, — to glorify God and to en- 
lighten men. He says, in substance, " It 
is good to pray, but we must pray in words 
that others can understand in order that 
they may pray with us. It is good to praise 
God, but we must praise Him in the lan- 
guage of men that men may praise Him 
with us. It is good to teach, but we must 
teach in familiar terms or our teaching 
will be of no service to others." 

It would seem unnecessary to give such 
advice to any church in any age. Yet it 
was necessary then. And even now the 
idea the Apostle sought to emphasize is 
by no means as generally accepted as it 
should be,- — namely, that no spiritual gift 
is of much value except it add to our ca- 
pacity to minister to our brethren. In this 
chapter Paul gives us his estimate of the 
relative value of spiritual gifts of a purely 

personal character and gifts which may be 
8 



MANY VOICES 

employed for the edification of the Church 
and the improvement of the world. His 
ratio is five to ten thousand! Hear him: 
" I would rather speak five words with my 
understanding, that I might teach others, 
than ten thousand words in an unknown 
tongue." 

Yet Paul concedes that every tongue, 
every voice, every sound, however un- 
known and mysterious, has its use, its 
signification, its place in the economy of 
God's government. He speaks even more 
strongly than appears in our version. He 
says, " Even though there be an indefinite 
number of sounds in the world, yet none 
is wholly meaningless. ,, And nowhere else 
does he reveal more unmistakably his men- 
tal grasp and greatness than here. He prac- 
tically anticipates by sixteen hundred years 
the scientific method based upon the theory 
that every separate fact has relation to law, 
that the whole universe of forces, visible 
and invisible, organic and inorganic, pon- 

9 



MANY VOICES 

derable and imponderable, is but the mani- 
fold expression of One Great Will. 

It is a great step in one's mental develop- 
ment when he comes to understand that 
everything has a meaning, that nothing in 
nature or life is unrelated to an intelligent 
cause. This is the very beginning of the 
scientific spirit. We see it in the man watch- 
ing the swinging chandelier at Pisa ; in the 
Swiss spectacle-maker experimenting with 
the glasses of the first rude telescope; in 
the boy studying the pulsating lid of the 
tea-kettle on the fire; in the physician ob- 
serving that the English dairy-maids who 
had contracted cow-pox were immune from 
small-pox. Others had observed these same 
facts, but had attached no significance to 
them. The inventors of the pendulum, the 
telescope, and the steam-engine, and the 
discoverer of vaccination by inoculation 
simply sought to find the meaning of fa- 
miliar facts. The physical scientist is a 
kind of interpreter of signs. People used 

10 



MANY VOICES 

to charge him with being in league with the 
devil. We now know he is in league with 
God. He is thinking God's thoughts after 
Him. He is interpreting God's speech to 
men. 

What if you discover in root or bark or 
fruit or flower a remedy for some disease, 
a tonic, or an anodyne ? Was that not God's 
thought first? You have simply found its 
signification. So if you discover in air or 
water or fire some element or combination 
of elements that may be utilized to lighten 
the burden of labor; or if you discover a 
new continent just at a time when the old 
world is overcrowded and the old social 
order is decadent, is not that God's thought, 
and have you not merely found its signifi- 
cation? Possibly the world does not suffi- 
ciently recognize the moral value of the 
services of those whose mission is to ascer- 
tain and publish to men the meaning of 
God's thoughts in nature. They are God's 
ii 



MANY VOICES 

servants, in a sense, — in a good sense, the 
servants of the race. 

But in a higher sense are they God's 
interpreters who study the significance of 
that vast number of voices by which God 
speaks to the fancy and feelings of men. 
These are artists, poets, lovers of beauty, 
teachers of truth in the realm of sentiment. 

This world would be a bleak and barren 
place if God had not put beauty into it, 
and if he had not created us with love for 
the beautiful. What if every sky were 
gray, and flowers the color of the soil from 
which they spring, and all speech were 
prose? But such is not God's world. He 
is the Master-Artist — He paints pictures 
on every sky. He puts music into every 
summer breeze, and every pine-tree in the 
forest, and every purling brook. There is 
no beauty of arch or dome or pinnacle 
which has not its antetype in cavern or sky 
or cloud-peak. The best the sculptor can 
do is to imitate the beauty of the form that 

12 



MANY VOICES 

proceeded from the perfect thought of 
God. 3o he who says, " I care nothing 
for beauty,'' is saying, " I care nothing for 
God's thoughts," for God thought beauty, 
and the human artist is in no sense the 
creator of beauty, — he only finds the sig- 
nification of nature's lines, nature's forms, 
nature's sounds and signs. And nature is 
a garment from God's loom. 

The artist-soul, whether he be painter, 
architect, sculptor, poet, or musician, has 
no power save as an interpreter. He is on 
speaking terms with beauty. Most of us 
are not. He makes us acquainted. He 
cries, " Stars, flowers, earth, sky, sea! speak 
to men that they may hear and under- 
stand!" And they speak to him, and he 
speaks their message to us. Has nature no 
voice? She had for Bryant. Has the sea 
no voice? It had for Byron. Has the 
marsh no voice? It had for Sidney Lanier. 
Has a landscape no language? Emerson 
said of a certain view among the White 
13 



MANY VOICES 

Mountains, " That always makes me 
pray." 

There was One to whom all nature 
spoke; the lilies, of God's goodness; the 
sparrows, of God's providence; the foun- 
tain, of eternal life ; the sun, of Him who 
is "the Father of Lights." To Jesus 
Christ every common thing of common 
life had some divine significance. His was 
a soul so sensitive that every sound broke 
upon it — sound of river and sea, sound of 
sorrow and sin — and instantly found in- 
terpretation as to its true meaning in the 
mind of God. 

In the highest realm of all — the realm 
of the spirit — it was Jesus Christ who first 
taught the world the significance of a lan- 
guage which had been but imperfectly 
understood by others. He knew how the 
human heart craves assurance of God's 
Fatherhood. So, almost the first lesson 
He taught us was to say "Our Father." 
Neither Moses, David, nor Isaiah; neither 
14 



MANY VOICES 

Homer, Socrates, nor Plato; neither Con- 
fucius, Buddha, nor Zoroaster had ever 
said anything quite so clear and comfort- 
ing as that. 

Jesus knew how the heart hungers for 
immortality; how, ever since Eve looked 
into the glazed eyes of her dead son, 
mothers have stood on the earth-shore of 
the river of death and strained their aching 
eyes and empty arms for a sight and a 
touch of some vanished form. So He said 
what left no shade of doubt as to the 
deathless life beyond. He knew also how 
the soul of sinful man yearns for some 
token of divine clemency, some availing 
word of mercy, some open way to pardon 
and to peace. So He spoke often of the 
Father's reconciled face, of the changeless 
purpose of the Eternal Heart to redeem 
His children, of the Throne of Grace and 
the Mercy Seat. Nay, more, He said, in 
spirit, " As you do not know how to ap- 
proach the Mercy Seat, take My hand — I 
15 



MANY VOICES 

will lead you. As you do not know how 
to pray, I will teach you. After this man- 
ner pray ye: Our Father." So, Jesus the 
man, knowing the significance of human 
tongues, Christ the God knowing how to 
interpret the divine voice, became the 
arbiter of two worlds, — Heaven's Ambas- 
sador and earth's High Priest. 

There is an event in the life of our Lord 
which throws great light, by way of illus- 
tration, upon the presence in some minds 
and the absence from others of the faculty 
of interpreting spiritual sounds. It is 
towards the close of His ministry. Cer- 
tain Greeks have come to Him for in- 
struction. His discourse ends in prayer. 
[It is difficult to say just where the dis- 
course ends and where the prayer begins.] 
The prayer ends, and a voice from the 
excellent glory is heard. It is the same 
that spoke at the baptism. Jesus hears 

it. John hears it, — it is he who gives us 
16 



MANY VOICES 

the record of the circumstance. Others 
who are in sympathy with Christ's ideas 
hear it, but many hear only a noise. They 
say, " It thundered." 

Let a man with no musical taste, no 
musical training, hear a great orchestral 
composition. However perfectly it may 
be rendered, he hears only the noise of 
the instruments. Let another hear it, 
and he goes away with noble thoughts 
awakened and deep emotions stirred. The 
music merely thunders to one. It speaks 
to the other. It is a matter of preparation, 
sympathy, sensitiveness. 

To the unspiritual mind the Bible is a 
confused chorus of discordant voices, dis- 
sonant tones, unmusical sounds, lacking 
unity, lacking consistency, lacking mean- 
ing. But to the reverent reader the Bible 
speaks. Its tones are manifold, but they 
never lack signification. Sometimes it 
speaks warningly, sometimes it entreats, 
sometimes it wooes with sweetness of con- 
17 



MANY VOICES 

solation. It is the old story of the Pillar, 
— whether of fire or cloud depends upon 
our view-point. 

To worldly eyes the sacrament of the 
Lord's Supper appears a sentimental cere- 
mony of merely human origin. To the 
humble, penitent, confessing disciple it 
appears what it is, — a Communion, a 
tryst with Jesus the Lord, a contact with 
the heart of the Eternal, and such a com- 
municant rises from the altar as one rises 
from his bed, refreshed ; as one rises from 
a banquet, nourished; as one rises from a 
fountain, cleansed. This line of cleavage 
separates the natural from the spiritual 
man at every point where the Kingdom 
of God touches human life. 

There are innumerable facts of experi- 
ence to which the thoughtless attach no 
meaning but which Christians are taught 
to interpret spiritually. Conscience, Duty, 
Inward Unrest, " Immortal Hunger," 
Prayer, — what signification do you give 

18 



MANY VOICES 

to these? This yearning for a fellowship 
not of time, this heart-homesickness, does 
it not point to God? Is not God the 
eternal answer to the spirit of man? Is 
not Christ the answer to sin? Is not im- 
mortality the answer to death, and heaven 
the answer to earth? If so, then 

" Life's not blot to us, nor blank ; 
It means intensely and means good: 
To find its meaning is our meat and drink." 



19 



Cornet^ 



SStfjttfjersoeber tfje titter 
(tomtit 

" And everything shall live whithersoever the 
river cometh." (Ezekiel xlvii. 9.) 

Ezekiel was a seer, hence a prophet. 
No man can teach who has not clear vision 
of truth. This prophet had both insight 
and farsight. He forth-told and fore- 
told. He had the divine perspective. 

There is no Future with God. He fills 
all time. Now and then are one with Him. 
Time present and time to come are an 
eternal now. All that shall be is, in God's 
sight, and in their sight whose eyes God's 
fingers touch to prophecy. 

Here is the vision of Ezekiel, the 
" Vision of the Waters," as it is known. 
A stately picture it is, a perfect work of 



WHITHERSOEVER 

poet's art. No vision of Dante or Milton 
or Bunyan or Tennyson approaches it in 
unadorned simplicity. He sees a river 
flowing by the altars of the House of 
God; a stream that grows wider and 
deeper as it nears the sea; a river fringed 
with green; and where it flows it brings 
beauty and bounty. It fructifies the bar- 
ren land and freshens the salt sea, and 
fails not forever. 

Doubtless the figure means more to the 
Eastern world than to us. Where deserts 
abound, where the sun shines with tropic 
heat, where even the breezes are like blasts 
from a furnace, living water is a luxury 
the worth of which we do not understand. 
So, as the Holy Scriptures came to us out 
of the East, as God chose to reveal His 
truth to us in Oriental tongues, Biblical 
symbolism is full of references to springs, 
fountains, wells, and rivers. " As cold 
waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news 
from a far country." " With joy shall ye 

24 



THE RIVER COMETH 

draw water out of the wells of salvation." 
" Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to 
the waters." " He shall come down like 
rain upon the mown grass." This figure 
was in Jesus' mind when He said to the 
Samaritan woman at Jacob's well, " Who- 
so drinketh of the water that I shall give 
him shall never thirst." And it was in 
his mind who closed the canon on Patmos, 
" Let him that is athirst come." Who shall 
say that this very vision of Ezekiel was not 
in his mind when he saw the " river of the 
water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding 
out of the throne of God and of the 
Lamb"? The river Ezekiel saw and the 
river John saw are the same. The 
prophet saw it from the earthward side, 
the apostle from the heavenly. 

From the shore of earth let us survey 
the river that flows out from " the threshold 
of the house" of God. It is the river of 
grace and truth. It had its source at 
Bethlehem. It was only a brooklet then, 

25 



WHITHERSOEVER 

so small that the ruthless footstep of a 
Roman governor might have changed its 
course — and would have changed its course 
but for the fact that it was dear to God. 
It seemed to end on Calvary, like the 
" Lost River" of Arizona, which flows a 
few miles and disappears from sight. But 
from the empty sepulchre in Joseph's gar- 
den it burst again, as burst the stream from 
smitten rock at Kadesh. It grew to great 
proportions at Pentecost. It widened im- 
measurably as it reached the Gentile world. 
It touched Europe at Philippi and Rome. 
Henceforth it was to be the broadest, deep- 
est stream of history. There is no conti- 
nent in which it does not flow, hardly a 
nation it does not bless. And it has been 
true from its beginning until now, — every- 
thing lives whithersoever it cometh. The 
wilderness and the solitary place are made 
glad. The desert rejoices and blossoms as 
the rose. The parched ground has become 
a pool, and the thirsty land springs of 
water. 



THE RIVER COMETH 

Dropping figurative speech, let us recall 
some of the historic and practical results 
of Christianity, a few of the manifold 
blessings that accompany the Gospel. 
There are some things which live only 
where Christianity lives, — some institu- 
tions which flourish, some ideas which 
prevail, some virtues which are practised, 
only where Christian truth is hid in human 
hearts. 

In the broadest possible view of the 
moral influence of Christianity we see 
that philanthropy — the love of man for 
man, the disinterested, benevolent love of 
man for his kind — is one of the peculiar 
fruits of the Gospel. There are other re- 
ligions which teach respect for the lower 
orders of life. In the estimation of many 
Hindus, the cow is a sacred animal. Cats 
and crocodiles were objects of veneration 
in Egypt. But neither in India nor in 
Egypt was human life a sacred thing 
until the Light of the World dawned 

97 



WHITHERSOEVER 

upon the darkness of Asia and the Gospel 
of the Son of Man supplanted the worship 
of Isis and Osiris. 

The doctrine of the unity of the race 
may have been dimly perceived, but it was 
never plainly discerned and forcefully 
taught until the Man of Galilee made 
it one of the very fundamental postulates 
of his new social and moral system. The 
missionary idea is founded upon the as- 
sumption that all men are brothers. Ju- 
daism was for the Hebrew, Hinduism 
for the Oriental, Confucianism for the 
Chinese, but Christianity for Man. Jesus 
Christ was the first cosmopolitan, the con- 
temporary of every age, the comrade of 
every soul. To Christian philanthropy we 
owe the inspiration of all the great world- 
movements of our age, by which bars of 
iron and gates of brass are beaten down, 
and nations begin to see the essential one- 
ness of the race. Of none other than Jesus 



THE RIVER COMETH 

of Nazareth could she have learned the 
lesson of her noble poem who wrote : 

" I was born as free as the silver light 

That laughs in a Southern fountain; 
Free as the sea-fed bird that nests 

On a Scandinavian mountain; 
Free as the wind that mocks at the sway 

And pinioning clasp of another, 
Yet in the slave they scourged to-day 

I saw and knew my brother ! 

" Vested in purple, I sat apart, 

But the cord that smote him bruised me; 
I closed my ears, but the sobs that broke 

From his savage breast accused me; 
No phrase of reasoning judgment just 

The plaint of my soul could smother, — 
A creature vile, abased to the dust, 

I knew him still — my brother! 

" And the autumn day that had smiled so fair 
Seemed suddenly overclouded; 
A gloom more dreadful than nature owns 
My human mind enshrouded. 
$9 



WHITHERSOEVER 

I thought of the power benign that made 
And bound men one to the other, 

And I felt in my brother's fear afraid, 
And ashamed in the shame of my brother." 

This idea of brotherhood lives " whither- 
soever the river cometh;" and because it 
lives certain other ideas grow out of it, 
among them, Democracy. There has never 
been a true democracy that was not Chris- 
tian in conception and inspiration. The 
nearest approach to it in pre-Christian 
times was the theocratic commonwealth 
of Israel. There were elements of democ- 
racy under Moses, Joshua, and the judges, 
but the commonwealth gave way to a mon- 
archy because the people were not pre- 
pared for it; it disintegrated, lacking the 
principle of unity, and this it lacked be- 
cause the world was yet to learn the lesson 
of brotherhood. 

There was a so-called democracy in 
Athens, but it was only a privileged 

30 



THE RIVER COMETH 

oligarchy, for two-thirds of its people 
were the property of the other third. 
Democracy is a comparatively modern 
development, and its great victories have 
been achieved among people who derived 
their inspiration from Christian sources. 
Thrilling is the story of the struggle for 
liberty in Germany and Holland, in Eng- 
land and America — Christian nations and 
Protestant. The anarchism of Italy, the 
nihilism of Russia, and the communism of 
France are simply suppressed democracy. 
Suppress steam and superheat it and de- 
struction follows. Govern it and give it 
vent, and you have motion, progress, 
wealth. Democracy is the political des- 
tiny of the world. There is but one 
absolute monarchy left in Europe (Tur- 
key considered an Asiatic power), and not 
one in all the Western hemisphere. Japan 
is a constitutional monarchy. India is in 
the hands of England. China will not 
remain a despotism after her dismember- 

31 



WHITHERSOEVER 

ment. South Africa is free. Democracy 
is in the air. The river flows through all 
the earth, and liberty lives " whithersoever 
the river cometh." 

It is needless to do more than just sug- 
gest that charity — systematic charity as 
distinguished from mere impulsive gener- 
osity; organized charity, which is the only 
effective charity, being at once prophy- 
lactic and curative — is among the fruits 
of Christianity. It is said there was but 
one hospital in all the world at the begin- 
ning of the Christian era, and that was 
for wounded gladiators, where they might 
be nursed back to strength to fight again. 
Whose are the hospitals on every modern 
city street? They bear a great variety 
of names, — Methodist, Presbyterian, Good 
Samaritan, St. Joseph's, but they are all 
Christ's hospitals. He taught the world 
a new pity for pain, a new sympathy for 
suffering, a new care for the distressed. 
And so it is of Orphans' Homes and 



THE RIVER COMETH 

Midnight Missions and Juvenile Reform- 
atories. So it is of all the " charities that 
soothe and heal and bless." They are the 
trees of fruit and shade that rim the river 
which issues from the House of God. 

See also how the humanities, education 
and art, " the liberal offices of life," the 
agencies that broaden and adorn the mind 
of man, are among the things that accom- 
pany the Gospel in its flow among the 
nations. The great universities of the 
world have had their founders in men of 
faith. When the president of one of 
America's greatest colleges was asked to 
select the sentiments to be inscribed upon 
the peristyle at the Columbian Exposition, 
he chose the words of Jesus Christ for 
one,—" Ye shall know the truth and the 
truth shall make you free." Go to the 
new Congressional Library at Washing- 
ton and you will find that saying inscribed 
upon one of its walls. Does it not sug- 
gest the intimate relation between the 

33 



WHITHERSOEVER 

truth-seeking or truth-loving spirit of 
our religion and the passion for truth 
characteristic of the age? 

The immortal masters of painting have 
exalted Christ and Christian themes. 
Poetry and music flourish best when 
they deal with inspiration's greatest 
thoughts, the doctrines of revelation, the 
sacred mysteries that elevate the mind 
whithersoever the river of God's Word 
floweth. 

But art is not life. Men may live with- 
out art, but they cannot live and be men 
without love and conscience and character. 
These make life. They are life. Friend- 
ship, domestic fidelity, social righteous- 
ness, integrity of conscience, purity of 
personal character, — these are the very 
essence of practical Christianity. The 
Christian family exists as a little repub- 
lic, in which each member governs him- 
self with reference to the rights of the 
others: the husband loving the wife as 

34 



THE RIVER COMETH 

his own body; the wife honoring the 
husband; children obeying their parents 
in the Lord; parents provoking not their 
children to wrath. He who setteth the 
solitary in families ordains that even 
humble homes may be hallowed by the 
perpetual presence of the spirit of His 
Son. Have you not read much in the 
New Testament of the church that is in 
the household? Picture to yourselves the 
ideal home, blessed with all peace, and 
sympathy, and chivalry, and mutual con- 
fidence. Can it be otherwise in the home 
of which Christ is the acknowledged Head, 
— where He sits at every table, guides 
every conversation, sanctifies every sor- 
row, spiritualizes every joy? It makes a 
vast difference in a home whether Christ 
is there. Everything gentle and noble and 
sweet lives whithersoever He cometh. 

But the basis of all Christian virtue, 
manifesting itself in every field of thought 
and conduct, affecting life in its largest 

35 



WHITHERSOEVER 

or in its more limited relations, is the 
work of God's grace in the soul of the 
individual. The Spirit-filled believer is 
the unit of power, static and active. The 
world is moved only as I am moved. The 
re-creation of the race begins when I take 
my first step toward God. All things 
begin to be made new when I open my 
heart to the inflow of His love. Is it not 
wonderful that the river of God's saving 
power flows so close to every soul that one 
act of the human will may open every plain 
of life to its incoming? One prayer, one 
sigh, one act of self -surrender, and the 
vital and vitalizing current sweeps in and 
lifts us up to the level of eternal life. 

With the entrance of God's grace into 
our hearts some things begin to die and 
other things to live. The things that die 
are the things that ought to die. The 
things that live are the things that must 
live and grow in us if we would know 
how well worth living lif e may be if hid 
with Christ in God. 

36 



€Ije dHjertassting d^oD 



fcT^Tj >T<>T4 ►ToT^ ^Tj^Tj lT^Tj iT^yTj ►T i 4>T^ iT^frT^ ►T i 4frT4 tfj^fa 



" From everlasting to everlasting, thou art 
God." (Psalm xc. 2.) 

Moses wrote this psalm. And so, chron- 
ologically, it belongs to the earliest litera- 
ture of the Bible. It would not be out 
of place in the book of Genesis; it might 
properly have been made the first chapter 
of the Bible, — a kind of foreword. But 
as it was a hymn, set to music, and sung 
in the Temple service at Jerusalem, it is 
included in the Hebrew Hymnal. Our 
book of Psalms was the Jewish hymn- 
book. 

When Moses wrote this psalm we do not 
know. It would be interesting to know, 
— whether amidst the luxuries of Pharaoh's 
palace, in sight of the temples of Egypt's 

39 



THE EVERLASTING GOD 

gods, or among the meadows of Midian as 
he watched the flocks of Jethro; whether 
in the wilderness of wandering, having 
passed Sinai and Marah, or while they 
abode at Kadesh, the turning-point of the 
nation's history, or whether in the valley, 
before he was led up to Nebo to look across 
to Canaan, and to die with the kiss of God 
upon his lips. 

We have only internal evidence as to the 
date of this composition. From the char- 
acter of the psalm it is not likely Moses 
wrote it while he was in Egypt. No man 
whose life lay in the lap of luxury ever 
wrote a poem like this. Neither was it 
written in Midian. It is not a pastoral 
poem; a shepherd's life is too serene to 
inspire such a song. Neither is it a young 
man's song. It is an old man's prayer, a 
pilgrim's hymn. Miriam is dead. Aaron 
is dead. The pilgrim is left alone, bereft. 
He knows he is nearing the end of his 
journey; he thinks of all the way he has 

40 



THE EVERLASTING GOD 

been led. Israel's history, like a panorama, 
passes before him. He thinks of other 
nations and their history. The glory of 
Egypt is fading. Babylon is changing 
masters. Empires are rising and falling; 
kings are being crowned and being buried. 
The world is like a kaleidoscope, — at every 
turn new combinations are formed and new 
pictures presented. The psalmist asks him- 
self, " Is there nothing permanent, nothing 
that does not change with time?" He 
thinks of God. He thinks, " Amidst all 
that is transient there is the Eternal. 
Amidst the fluctuating there is the fixed. 
There is something the mind can rest on, 
the heart can trust in, the life can build 
on." Then he writes, " Lord, Thou hast 
been our dwelling-place in all genera- 
tions." 

Wherever this psalm was written, when- 
ever, and by whomsoever, it is the song of 
a swimmer in the sea who has found land. 
It looked like an island at first, but he 

41 



THE EVERLASTING GOD 

discovers it is a continent. It is the song 
of a builder who has penetrated soil and 
sub-soil and clay and has come to the 
granite. Doubt not he had been digging 
deeply before he found this rock. How 
far back into the past he must have looked 
when he spoke of " all generations !" Back 
of his own personal history, the weary 
march, the sea, the plagues, the burning- 
bush, the slavery in Egypt, was Joseph; 
God had been his refuge. Back of Joseph, 
the fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; 
God had been their refuge. Back of Abra- 
ham, Noah; God was his refuge. Back 
of Noah, Enoch, who had his dwelling- 
place in God. Back of the first man to 
breathe the breath of life, creation, and 
back of creation, the Eternal Mind, which 
foresaw the whole world-drama from 
time's beginning to time's end. Out of 
some such spiritual vision came the in- 
spiration of this psalm and this text. 
This psalm! Grand and simple; deep 

42 



THE EVERLASTING GOD 

in feeling and high in conception, true 
in its portraiture of human life, and 
lofty in its representation of the Infinite; 
serious yet hopeful; mournful yet trust- 
ful, without imitation or quotation, older 
than Greek ode or Persian epigram, it is 
the message of a man of God; it is a 
message from God. 

There is a time in our lives when novelty 
and variety attract us. We weary of the 
old and court the new. Youth is that time. 
Restless, roving, in quest of happiness or 
power, we forsake old paths and exult in 
our new freedom. But as the years go 
by and age comes on, we travel back to 
the old scenes and kiss the very sod our 
youthful feet pressed, and walk along the 
streams where we once gathered flowers 
with something of the gladness with which 
the ransomed walk beside the river of life. 
It is the same sod, yet not the same, — it is 
furrowed with graves ; it is the same brook, 
yet not the same, — it images not the same 

43 



THE EVERLASTING GOD 

faces as of yore. Nothing is much more 
pathetic than the return of a man to his 
early home at sixty or seventy years of 
age. It is the tragedy of the mountain 
sleeper over again when he cries out, " Is 
there nobody that remembers me?" 

Mountains are the most nearly un- 
changeable things on earth. This ex- 
plains much of the imagery of the Bible. 
" As the mountains are round about Jeru- 
salem, so the Lord is round about His 
people." And yet even mountains wear 
away. The elements are at war with the 
mountains, and in time their conformation 
is altered and their altitude diminished. 
Volcanic forces are at work in Martinique 
building up a new cone for Mont Pelee. 
Great glaciers move down the slopes of 
Alpine and Alaskan mountains, remind- 
ing us that even mountains are not per- 
petual. Are the stars more durable? Job 
sang of Orion and Arcturus and the 
Pleiades. Surely they have not changed? 

44 



THE EVERLASTING GOD 

Have they not? Have you not heard of 
the worn-out worlds of space, of extin- 
guished suns? The celestial bodies are so 
shifting that there was a time when Thu- 
ban in Draco was our pole-star, and there 
will be a time when Alpha Lyra will be 
our pole-star. In 1876 a new star blazed 
out in Cygnus, rose to the third magni- 
tude, and then disappeared. Another such 
phenomenon occurred in the constellation 
of the Northern Crown in 1866. Prob- 
ably those stars were suns, with planets 
depending upon them for heat and light. 
Something happened, some eruption or 
collision, which caused them to shine with 
a thousand times their ordinary brilliance. 
What would happen to our planet if our 
sun should suddenly increase its heat a 
thousand-fold? Not a sign of life would 
survive a minute! Is that to be the his- 
tory of this planet, this solar system? It 
is enough to know that whether we look 
at mountain or star, at earth or sky, noth- 

45 



THE EVERLASTING GOD 

ing our eyes rest upon is " from everlast- 
ing to everlasting." " Change and decay 
in all around I see." 

But little would it comfort us to know 
that mountains or stars are immutable since 
human life lacks so much of permanence. 
" The days of our years are threescore 
years and ten." What if they be four- 
score? "Are they not all labor and sor- 
row? We are soon cut off, and fly away." 
Where are the friends of yesterday? Not 
many are left to us. Some are sleeping 
under the fallen leaves, and some have 
ceased to be friends. The bitterest tragedy 
is in the fact that friendship pales and 
fades. We say, " Let mountains wear 
away, let stars grow dim, if only our 
friends remain our friends." But they 
do not. We change, they change, and 
when next we meet, the hand-clasp is less 
warm, the greeting less cordial. We often 
outgrow our friendships. We change our 
point of view, our angle of vision, or they 

46 



THE EVERLASTING GOD 

do, and then follow avoidance, estrange- 
ment. When we survey all this, — that 
nothing our eyes see or our hands touch 
is secure from mutability, — it gives us a 
heart-famine for the abiding. Moses felt 
this hunger, and found its appeasement in 
God. For us there is a table spread in the 
wilderness; for us there is an overflowing 
cup, and it is here, " From everlasting to 
everlasting, Thou art God." Is this not 
cold water to thirsty souls? Is this not the 
very bread of Life? 

It was a new note in the music of the 
world, three and a half millenniums ago 
when Moses smote this chord and sang 
this song. The world was full of fear 
of heathen gods and goddesses. Bel, 
Istar, Moloch, creatures of mere caprice, 
subject to fits of wrath, to sudden and 
violent passions. Greek and Roman 
divinities were pictured as making war 
on each other and on men, as having 
favorites among themselves and among 

47 



THE EVERLASTING GOD 

mortals. Jupiter was only a monstrous 
Csesar, Jove an omnipotent tyrant. Over 
against these conceptions of the gods is 
the revelation of one God, pure and 
holy, good and kind, sovereign but not 
arbitrary, " slow to anger and plenteous 
in mercy," everywhere and always the 
same, changeless from eternity to eter- 
nity. If this be God, our God, what 
follows? If ever God loved man, He 
loves man now. If ever He loved us, 
He loves us now. So, if sorrow comes 
into our lives, it is not because God has 
ceased to love us. If losses come, it is 
not because He has forgotten us. If all 
the world seems like a house unroofed, 
and the torrents beat upon our unpro- 
tected heads, it is not because God has 
turned His face from us. His is a 
friendship we cannot outgrow. His is 
a providence time cannot alter. His is 
a care death cannot defeat. That man 
was right who wrote upon his weather- 

48 



THE EVERLASTING GOD 

vane, " God is Love," and explained that 
he put the motto there not because God's 
love is fickle as the weather, but because, 
whichever way the wind blows, He is Love. 
A right conception of the changeless 
character of God will teach us patience 
in the midst of trial. It will teach us 
to imitate Him by striving for that con- 
stant heart for which the Psalmist prayed, 
that steadfastness and immovability to 
which an apostle exhorts us, " Holding 
fast the profession of our faith without 
wavering." We will not be driven from 
discipleship by ill-usage, nor allured from 
it by the subtle flattery of the world. 
Faith in the changeless will of God will 
give us perfect confidence in His govern- 
ment. The fitful changes of the world 
are controlled by Him. It will teach us 
to realize the consolation of His promises. 
We who trust in Him cannot be disap- 
pointed. We who confide in Him cannot 
be endangered; we who fight for Him 

49 



THE EVERLASTING GOD 

cannot be defeated. It were well for us 
in the light of this text to read anew the 
words, " Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, 
to-day, and forever." 

What was Jesus Christ yesterday? The 
Friend of sinners, the Comforter of sor- 
row, the Saviour of the penitent, the Con- 
queror of death. What was He to Mary 
Magdalene? He opened the gates of new 
life to her. What was He to John on 
Patmos? Companion in exile, and Com- 
pensation for all pain. What was He to 
John Bunyan in Bedford Jail? To Wil- 
liam Penn in London Tower? To Mad- 
ame Guyon in prison? Freedom, bound- 
less horizon, unfettered thought, and hope. 
Hear the prisoner sing: 

" A little bird I am, 

Shut from the fields of air, 
And in my cage I sit and sing 

To Him Who placed me there. 
Well pleased a prisoner to be, 
Because, my God, it pleaseth Thee." 
50 



THE EVERLASTING GOD 

What was Jesus Christ to John Wesley 
in persecution? Peace, perfect peace. 
What was He to William Carey and 
Melville Cox? Heaven on earth even in 
the heart of heathen darkness. What was 
He to Alfred Cookman, dying? Opened 
gates of glory, victory by the blood of 
the Lamb. All this was yesterday. We 
are of to-day. He is still the same. Nor 
shall time deflect His purpose or decrease 
His power. He is from " everlasting to 
everlasting" God. " The Eternal God is 
our Refuge, and underneath are the ever- 
lasting arms." 



51 



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iEltjal) tlje Reformer 

" And Elijah said unto Ahab, As the Lord God 
of Israel liveth, before whom I stand." (I Kings 
xvii. 1.) 

The character of Elijah is rugged, 
majestic, colossal. He is the reformer 
of his age. The brightest pages of 
human history tell of lives like his: Jo- 
seph in Egypt, Daniel in Babylon, Nehe- 
miah in Jerusalem, John the Baptist in 
Judea, Chrysostom in Constantinople, Sa- 
vonarola in Florence, Luther in Germany, 
Knox in Scotland, Wesley in England. 
All of these began their work, as Elijah 
began his, by establishing in the minds of 
men just conceptions of the character of 
God. Hear him before Ahab — Ahab, idol- 
ater and polytheist, — " As the Lord God 

55 



ELIJAH THE REFORMER 

of Israel liveth." Israel's God, the living 
God, is not in Ahab's pantheon of gods, 
but Elijah will put Him there, will set 
up His name, and if Ahab can only be 
made to see what God this is, he will re- 
nounce all other gods and cast them out. 

And this is the first fact in the conscious- 
ness of the reformer, personal accounta- 
bility to God. "As the Lord God of 
Israel liveth, before Whom I stand" A 
great American statesman, the greatest 
orator since Demosthenes, once said, " The 
greatest thought of which I have any con- 
ception is that of my personal responsi- 
bility to the Almighty." There can be 
no greater thought than this in its bear- 
ing upon human conduct. Those who 
have accomplished most for the race have 
lived in the atmosphere created by that 
sense of inalienable accountability. The 
reflection, " I stand before God," lays 
bare the primary impulse of the reformer, 
his intense motive and purpose. It ex- 

56 



ELIJAH THE REFORMER 

plains his courage. Elijah stands before 
Ahab, but he sees God more plainly than 
he sees Ahab. Because of this fact it is 
Ahab standing before Elijah, just as nine 
centuries later it was not Christ standing 
before Pilate but Pilate standing before 
Christ. Pilate was on trial, not Christ. 
Ahab was on trial, not Elijah. If it seem 
a small thing to you for Elijah to con- 
front Ahab thus, remember who Ahab 
was, — " proudest and fiercest spirit of that 
old age of tyranny," cruel, conscienceless, 
absolute, with a woman at his side as much 
more ambitious than he, as Lady Macbeth 
was more ambitious than Macbeth. Few 
men rise to heights of heroism or holiness 
without the help of some good woman; 
few men sell their souls to sin for any 
price, unprompted by some bad woman. 
So here are Ahab and Jezebel. Consider 
them as to their power, their prestige. 
Then consider who it is that rebukes them, 
thwarts their designs, defeats their pur- 

57 



ELIJAH THE REFORMER 

poses, predicts their downfall: an abso- 
lutely unknown man. 

Elijah appears upon the scene without 
introduction. No one vouches for him. 
His lineage is unknown. His parentage 
is unheralded, and that among a people 
and in an age that made more of gene- 
alogy than modern Philadelphians do. 
What race is so careful to keep ancestral 
records as were the Jews? His province 
and his town are known, but they are not 
favorable to him. Gilead was a wild and 
lawless country, much like the feud coun- 
ties of Kentucky in our day. Unlikely 
place to produce a prophet. Yet God is 
fond of such anomalies. Out of the wil- 
derness came the herald of the Christ, and 
out of Galilee came He whom the love and 
faith of ages have crowned the King of 
Saints. Joan of Arc was a peasant girl, 
yet she drove the English out of France. 
Martin Luther was a miner's son, yet he 
lighted a fire in Germany which yet blazes 

58 



ELIJAH THE REFORMER 

throughout Christendom. Abraham Lin- 
coln was a child of bitter poverty, yet he 
was the man of destiny to the Union. 
Many a precious pearl is hidden in an 
unlovely shell, and many a white flower 
springs from the blackest soil. When God 
has a great work to do, a work which only 
a great man can do, it is His way to take 
a man out of obscurity and solitude. He 
vouches for His man. He assumes that 
man's paternity. The supernatural is that 
man's credential. 

When Charles Stuart asked the officer 
who came to arrest him, " Where is your 
warrant?" the officer pointed through the 
window to the street, in which stood regi- 
ments of soldiers. " There is my warrant, 
sir." Charles looked and saw, and said, 
"It is writ large." Ahab did not chal- 
lenge Elijah; he saw the warrant "writ 
large." Some men need no badge of their 
authority. Jesus needed none. When he 
drove the mercenaries from the temple no 



59 



ELIJAH THE REFORMER 

man dared ask Him for His warrant. 
Sidney Smith said of a certain member 
of Parliament, " The Ten Commandments 
are written on his face." He was the very 
embodiment of righteousness. Elijah was 
such a man, — shaggy, uncouth, clad in 
coarse raiment, about his shoulders a 
mantle of camel's skin, yet was his face 
radiant from fellowship with God, yet 
were his eyes bright with unveiled vision 
of the truth. Is he not what some his- 
torian called Napoleon, — " grand, gloomy, 
and peculiar" ? Grand, always grand, 
absolutely dignified. No mountebank. 
More kingly than the king himself. 
Gloomy, once plunged into abysmal 
melancholy by temporary eclipse of 
faith, once despondent, to prove that 
he was a man of like passions with us. 
Peculiar in that good sense in which the 
apostle speaks of Christians as " a royal 
priesthood, a peculiar people." 

If ever a man should rise to call him- 

60 



ELIJAH THE REFORMER 

self Elijah, to claim to be a reincarnation 
of Elijah the Reformer, it is not neces- 
sary to dispute his claim. Mere argument 
is thrown away. Just institute a compari- 
son. Look at the original, and then at 
the copy. See if the mantle fits. Here 
is the portrait of Elijah, clear as an Italian 
cameo. Observe his features. Notice his 
intense spirituality. God is the circumfer- 
ence of his circle, at once the circumference 
and the centre. God is his surest fact. 
Ahab and Jezebel are but small motes 
dancing in the sunshine. The royal court 
is a shadow. The palace is a cobweb. Be- 
yond the palace are the mountains of 
Gilead. They have spoken to Elijah of 
God. Above the mountains are the stars. 
They have declared to Elijah the glory 
of God. God has become the most inti- 
mate and the most extensive reality in his 
consciousness. And in conscious co-opera- 
tion with God the world becomes a little 

thing. 

01 



ELIJAH THE REFORMER 

If we lack anything to make us spiritual 
it is this, — the clear apprehension of God 
as the most indubitable reality. We need 
not so much the sense of sin as the sense 
of God. All the other facts of life will 
take their proper places when we grasp 
this in its relations. Amiel had hold of 
this fact — Amiel, that quiet, lonely, lovely 
Swiss professor at Geneva, whose journal 
Mrs. Humphrey Ward has translated for 
us — when he said, " What I desire is the 
sum of all desires, and what I seek to know 
is the sum of all knowledge. Always the 
Complete, the Absolute, the Infinite, teres 
atque rotundum. . . . There is no repose 
for the mind except in the Absolute; for 
feeling except in the Infinite ; for the soul 
except in the Divine ; nothing finite is true, 
is interesting, is worthy to fix my atten- 
tion. . . . Religion for me is to live and 
die in God, in complete abandonment to 
the holy Will, which is at the root of na- 
ture and destiny." Lanier had this fact 
when he wrote : 

62 



ELIJAH THE REFORMER 

As the marsh-hen secretly builds her a nest in the 
watery sod, 

Behold, I will build me a nest in the greatness of 
God. 

I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen 

flies 
In the freedom that fills all the space ''twixt the 

earth and the skies." 

Notice also Elijah's sweet humility. He 
claims no power of his own, arrogates no 
credit to himself. He organizes no tri- 
umphal procession. He covets neither 
garland nor crown. He is simply God's 
servant, God's messenger, and in the hour 
of his greatest victory, on Mount Carmel, 
he retires into the shadow, that it may be 
all the more apparent that the excellency 
of the power is of God and not of man. 
He asks no recognition for himself. He 
builds no palace, makes provision for no 
perpetuation of his office. If he looks for 
a successor, it is not to Gilead among his 
kinsmen, but to the school of the prophets, 

63 



ELIJAH THE REFORMER 

to Elisha, who seems most fit to be the 
people's leader and God's mouth-piece. 

Beautiful is the reformer's tenderness. 
Beneath that rough exterior is a heart of 
melting sympathy. He ministers to the 
distress of a poor widow. He restores to 
the arms of his mother a dead son. He 
cleaves with fatherly solicitude to Elisha. 
Standing upon the rim of Jordan, wait- 
ing for the chariot that is to take him 
home, he says to Elisha, " Ask what I shall 
do for thee before I am taken away." It 
is not strange Elisha thought of him as his 
father. Elijah was the father of the best 
part of Elisha. And now the prophet 
ascends to God. He yields to the gravi- 
tation of that world with which, by con- 
templation, he is familiar, that world where 
are his treasures, and time and sense are 
for him no more. 

Nine hundred years pass. Christ has 
come. It is on Tabor or Hermon. Christ 
is transfigured. There are with Him two 

64 



ELIJAH THE REFORMER 

men once of earth, Moses and Elijah. 
They have a part in the fulfillment of 
redemption's plan. They are there to 
witness that the testimony of prophecy is 
the Spirit of Jesus. They were Christians 
before Christ. We are Christians after 
Christ. But in Christ we who are saved 
under grace, and they who were saved 
under the law, meet in the fellowship of 
saints, in the love of " the Lord's appear- 
ing." 



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" He brought me forth into a large place." 
(Psalm xviii. 19.) 

Some one asked the chaplain of George 
IV. if he felt no fear when preaching to 
royalty, and the good man replied, " I for- 
get that there are princes before me and 
remember only that there are souls to in- 
struct in godliness." The author of this 
psalm forgot that he was a king when he 
wrote these verses, and remembered only 
that he was a soul, that he had been helped, 
and by Whom he had been helped. 

There are three singular facts about this 
psalm. It occurs twice in the Holy Scrip- 
tures, once in II Samuel and once in the 
Psalter. It contains two verses quoted in 
the New Testament, one in Romans and 

69 



A LARGE PLACE 

the other in Hebrews. These verses are 
ascribed to Christ, as they appear in the 
New Testament, so we may believe that 
it is something more than a psalm of David, 
— that King David's Lord speaks through 
it. 

But here, at the nineteenth verse, it is a 
human soul speaking. He is rehearsing 
the many mercies of the Lord. He has 
just said, " He delivered me from my 
strong enemy. He drew me out of many 
waters. He was my stay." You know 
what a stay is in building. It is a prop. 
As applied to persons, a stay is a stand-by, 
and the Greek for stand-by is " Paraclete," 
and we translate it " Comforter" or " Ad- 
vocate." "If any man sin, we have an 
Advocate with the Father." So the 
Psalmist says, " The Lord was my Ad- 
vocate." Now follows the text, — " He 
brought me forth into a large place." 
And this is not the least precious fact here 
adverted to, by any means. 

70 



A LARGE PLACE 

David was born in a small place, moved 
in a small circle until the Lord led him 
out. Not at once was he led into a large 
place. He mounted to the throne by way 
of many a hardship and many a battle. 
It was so with Joseph. He reached the 
palace by way of the prison. But he came 
to the large place in time, as did Abraham 
before him. Ur of the Chaldees was a 
small place. Abraham had no outlook 
there, but he found a large place in 
Canaan, a large place on earth, and a 
large place in history. Even so Moses 
was led. Egypt was a small place, — not 
small in extent of dominion, nor in its 
power among the nations of the world, — 
but its horizon was small. The palace is 
a poor place for a prophet. Better the 
desert. Better the meadows of Midian. 
Better the mountains of Moab. Better 
the wandering through the wilderness. 
Better the Sinai of law, the Nebo of 
glory. 

71 



A LARGE PLACE 

This has been the song of all God's ser- 
vants in every age, — " He brought me 
forth into a large place." Obedience to 
God never contracts our powers. Christ 
does not lead men backward, but onward, 
outward, upward. Matthew was led into 
a large place when he left the toll-booth 
to follow Jesus. Peter had never seen 
anything larger than the Sea of Galilee 
until Jesus made him a fisher of men. 
Paul at his best was only a theological 
hair-splitter, a heresy-hunter, until Christ 
appeared to him and filled his heart with 
a passion for the preaching of the Gospel 
and the glory of the cross. If the voice 
of Patriarch and Prophet and Apostle 
could be heard to-day it would cry, 
"Never say ' No' to God. If He call 
thee, go. He will lead thee into a large 
place." 

No experience is more common to the 
most of us than a certain contempt for 
the littleness of the things by which we 

72 



A LARGE PLACE 

are compelled to live. We are crowded 
and hemmed in by our circumstances. 
We are painfully limited. The farm boy 
who leaves the country goes to the city to 
seek a more abundant life. He dreams the 
city calls him to large enterprises. He does 
not know how cramped are the lodgings of 
most dwellers in the city, how small a part 
of it he will occupy, how easily the solitary 
individual is lost in the crowd. James A. 
Garfield heard the call of the sea when he 
was a lad, and only the love of a widowed 
mother kept him from following a sea- 
faring life. Why is the sea so attractive 
to many? Because of its bounty, its un- 
measured space. It is a touching fact that 
at the end of his life at Elberon, the eyes 
of the dying President rested lovingly, 
longingly, on the sea. Mr. Blaine sug- 
gests, in his Eulogy, that then his friend 
"heard the great waves breaking on the 
farther shore and felt upon his wasted 
brow the breath of the eternal morning." 

7S 



A LARGE PLACE 

Thomas Marshall, of Kentucky, a man of 
genius and power, expressed his desire to 
be buried in an open field and not in a 
crowded cemetery. " I have been crowded 
all my life/' he said, " give me room for 
my grave." If one who has led a life of 
intense activity and great prominence feels 
this sense of limitation, is it strange that 
others are dissatisfied, whose ordinary lives 
are best symbolized by " one raindrop fall- 
ing on moor, or meadow, or mountain, one 
flake of snow melting into the immeas- 
urable deep." 

I have heard a young lawyer say, 
" When I was in college I had great 
ambitions. I planned to make myself an 
authority on international law, but now 
that I am out I am compelled to try 
mean little cases before mean little 
juries." He had not found the large 
place he sought. The youth who would 
be a painter must be a clerk, and the 
man with an artist's soul is selling tea 



74 



A LARGE PLACE 

and coffee. Longfellow tells us of one 
'whom nature made a poet but whom 
Destiny made a schoolmaster." We can- 
not map out our orbit as we would. We 
crave largeness. Our faculties seem fitted 
for a greater sphere than that in which we 
move. Literature is full of the expression 
of this fact. " Songs of Unrest" would 
fill volumes. Who of us busy daily with 
little vexatious problems would not prefer 
to deal with great ones? Who of us fight- 
ing battles daily which only God can see 
would not prefer to fight an epoch-making 
battle? It is the insignificance of our lives 
that frets us. So, whatever enlarges life in 
any right direction is a benefaction. 

Blessed is imagination, which expands 
the walls and lifts the low roof of life, 
and fills it with dreams of what might 
have been and of what may be. Blessed 
is travel, for it enlarges the horizon of 
the traveller if he be a close observer. It 
is a distinct step in one's mental develop- 



A LARGE PLACE 

ment when he first acquaints himself with 
the language and customs of another coun- 
try than his own. It is an old saying, " A 
man is as many men as he can speak 
languages." I know a German shoemaker 
who speaks nine languages, and he has ac- 
quired them by travelling through foreign 
lands. He goes abroad every year or two, 
tramps through the country he visits, lives 
the life of the people, and then comes back 
to his little shop to cobble and to live over 
in memory the scenes of his now numer- 
ous pilgrimages. Blessed is literature, for 
it broadens life. To most of us time to 
travel is denied. But books are not denied 
us, — books of travel, of history, of sci- 
ence, of fiction. A late writer advises us 
to read that fiction which portrays life as 
different as possible from our own. We 
hardly need that counsel. A certain in- 
stinct guides us in that direction. Dis- 
satisfaction with the limitations of our 
lives impels us to read stories of soldiers 

76 



A LARGE PLACE 

and knights and heroes and heroic deeds. 
Far-off ages and far-off civilizations at- 
tract us. We broaden our lives by- 
changing our view-point. Blessed is 
everything that tends to widen our sym- 
pathies and give us the consciousness of 
new relations. Blessed is the religion 
that takes us out of ourselves, makes us 
superior to our limitations, creates a new 
world for us. Supremely blessed is the 
Gospel of Jesus Christ, for of all religions 
that the world has seen it offers its dis- 
ciples the most abundant life. 

The distinctive glory of Christianity is 
its expansive spirit. The key-note of it is 
the greatest possible development of the 
individual. It aims to make every man a 
king, every heart the throne of the Eter- 
nal, every life a consecrated temple. " The 
humblest life that lives may be divine." It 
is a great undertaking, and it is unique in 
Christianity. Confucius never taught it. 
There is nothing in Confucianism to lead 

77 



A LARGE PLACE 

the individual soul to greatness. Pru- 
dential maxims and conventional morality- 
may make a man a better machine, but 
they do not increase his spiritual resources. 
Buddha taught the extinguishment of the 
individual. Epictetus taught the suppres- 
sion of emotion, the denial of desire. 
Christ's doctrine is, Diminish nothing that 
is right; repress nothing that may be 
turned to good; do not diminish your 
interests, but multiply them; live the 
largest possible life; conquer your sor- 
rows by making the sorrows of others 
your care; master your desires by giving 
them a new direction ; extend life on every 
side. Is not this the Master's teaching? 
Is it not the uniform testimony of experi- 
ence that Christian discipleship leads every 
faithful soul into a large place? It is sin 
that narrows life, clips the wings with 
which the spirit would soar to lofty heights. 
Hence the conquest of sin by grace is like 
the liberation of a slave. Fetters fall off. 

78 



A LARGE PLACE 

Iron doors and brazen gates are torn 
asunder, and the captive moves out into 
God's universe to learn how life enlarges 
with each new step in grace. 
There is a song which says, — 

" Could we but stand where Moses stood 
And view the landscape o'er." 

Why, we can stand there; we do stand 
there! Our view-point is from the side 
of Jesus Christ. We have His perspec- 
tive. We see things as He sees them. So 
things are not what they seem. Life and 
death, time and duty, sorrow and pain are 
transfigured, and history sweeps on to- 
wards that " far-off divine event" when 
" all things shall be made new." Christ 
wants us to see, to hear, to think, to feel, 
to act, in view of infinite relations. He 
wants us to know that selfishness turns life 
into a squirrel-cage ; that envy, greed, false- 
hood, cruelty, base appetites imprison men, 
make life small, and that the spirit of holi- 

79 



A LARGE PLACE 

ness extends all the boundaries of the inner 
man. Remember this; for the idea pre- 
vails among some that Christianity limits 
life, except in the direction of the future. 
The fact is there is nothing else that so 
expands it. Not imagination, not travel, 
not literature, not all other things com- 
bined. God never calls us to impoverish- 
ment or isolation, but always to enrich- 
ment and fellowship with the spirits of 
just men made perfect. 

Christ was always calling men, — Philip, 
Nathanael, the rich young ruler, Zacchaeus, 
Bartimeus, Lazarus, Nicodemus. Did any 
one of them follow Him and fail to find 
the meaning of abundant life? Did any 
one of them turn back who did not turn 
away from glory and honor and immor- 
tality? Years ago I knew a life that was 
transformed and led into a large place and 
made fruitful in abundant measure, and 
the memory of it lingers in my mind like 
a benediction. A common plough-boy 

80 



A LARGE PLACE 

heard somewhere of the Great Teacher, 
who made peasants and fishermen His 
disciples and let them share His kingly 
thoughts. As he walked behind the 
plough, he said to himself, " I would like 
to live a larger life; I would like to feel 
the uplift of great ideas. If the Teacher 
will take me I will learn of Him." From 
that hour he was a scholar in the school of 
Christ. He found the Master meek and 
lowly of heart, and not at all like some 
teachers who have no time to spend with 
beginners. Almost before he knew it the 
boy began to think differently of nature, 
of people, of all God's creatures. He 
found himself growing more patient and 
humane, more studious and reverent, richer 
in affection and keener in his interest in 
everything that concerned the welfare of 
the world. There was no sudden spasm 
of emotion, but a gradual breaking away 
from old conditions, a gradual ascension 
Godward. He thought of that Young 

81 



A LARGE PLACE 

Man who suffered Himself to be baptized 
that He might leave nothing of righteous- 
ness unfulfilled, and he was baptized. He 
thought of another, who said, " I am debtor 
both to the Jew and Greek," and he said, 
" I, too, am a debtor to the world." So 
he began to converse with people about the 
sweet reasonableness of Christianity. He 
had a word for other plough-boys, and a 
whole community began to feel the impulse 
of his words and work. He never entered 
the ministry, but his life was a continual 
ministry. From the farm he went into 
the halls of the Legislature of his State, 
and from there to the governorship, and 
from there the God Who spoke to him as 
he followed the plough called him to pass 
" through the gates into the City." Such 
a life was that of the late Governor Mount, 
of Indiana, upon whose tomb may well be 
written, — " He led me forth into a large 
place." 

This is what God wants to do for all 



A LARGE PLACE 

of us. Young man, you cannot be so 
ambitious for yourself as He is for you. 
Not that He makes all His servants leaders 
in the State, but He makes us princes of 
a royal line, companions of apostles, com- 
rades of the saints, followers in the kingly 
train of the conquering Christ. 



83 



%i C&ou faint 









M ETjou JFatnt 

" If thou faint in the day of adversity thy 
strength is small." (Prov. xxiv. 10.) 

This proverb assumes adversity to be a 
part of the common experience of life. 
The author of Ecclesiastes may have been 
a pessimist, but he told an universal truth 
when he said, "If a man live many years 
and rejoice in them all, yet let him remem- 
ber the days of darkness, for they shall be 
many." Not to Christians alone do the 
words of Jesus apply, — " In the world ye 
shall have tribulation." It is well to know 
this in the beginning ; it will prevent many 
painful surprises and innumerable disap- 
pointments. 

It is no kindness to a child never to let 
him see the harder lines of life, to keep him 

87 



IF THOU FAINT 

ignorant of the seamy side of things. 
There is nothing much more pitiable than 
the sight of a youth who has been so deli- 
cately and daintily reared that it has not 
occurred to him that he can see a dark day 
until the experience comes to him. It 
bursts upon him. He has thought of the 
world as a great playground. Suddenly 
he sees it as a battlefield, his battlefield. 
He has thought of life as a comedy. Now 
it breaks upon him as a tragedy, with pain 
in the air he breathes and death's black 
cloud over it all. He is incapable of heroic 
action because of his astonishment. He 
has gone out to war with a dress suit and a 
rattan cane. He faints at the sight of 
blood. While the man who was nerved and 
armed for this hour sustains the shock, he 
lies prostrate, wondering how it happened. 
It did not happen. It was planned. This 
is what war is for, what life is for. 

So it is well for a child to know what is 
before him. Tell him as he stands at the 

88 



IF THOU FAINT 

opening gates of life, " Before you are 
pain, loss, trial, toil, hardship. Days will 
come when the sun shall be hid, and nights 
when no stars shall shine. Reverses will 
come, but be brave, acquit yourself like a 
man, so that whether vanquished or victor 
you may prove yourself a good soldier." 

There is another figure by which life is 
represented, as a voyage. It has smooth 
seas and breakers, favorable breezes and 
head-winds, clear skies and black clouds. 
Some are inclined to say that breakers and 
head- winds and frowning skies prevail. It 
is not so ; but there are times that try men's 
souls, hours that test the seaworthiness of 
the craft and the seamanship of the cap- 
tain. The part of wisdom is to sing when 
the skies are clear and the wind is fair, and 
keep a brave heart and a steady hand when 
the storm breaks, and outride it. Joaquin 
Miller gives us a noble picture of Columbus 
on his first voyage of discovery: 



IF THOU FAINT 

" Behind him lay the gray Azores, 

Behind the gates of Hercules ; 
Before him not the ghost of shores, 

Before him only shoreless seas; 
The good mate said, ' Now must we pray, 

For lo! the very stars are gone, 
Brave Admiral, speak, what shall I say?' 

6 Why, say, Sail on and on I' 

" Then pale and worn he kept the deck, 

And peered through darkness. Ah, that 
night, 
Of all dark nights ! And then a speck-^— 

A light ! a light ! a light ! a light ! 
It grew, a starlit flag unfurled ! 

It grew to be Time's burst of dawn. 

He gained a world. He gave that world 

Its grandest lesson : ' On ! sail on !' " 

Well, that is the lesson of the text, Sail 
on, in spite of adversity; faint not when 
adversity cometh; be strong in the day of 
trial, for it will come, tribulation will come. 
" But it comes not to some," you say; " it 
comes not to the favorites of fate, the dar- 

90 



IF THOU FAINT 

lings of Providence." And who are they? 
Where do they live? A man was walking 
with a friend, along what is regarded by 
some as the handsomest residence street of 
the world, and he said, " You may think the 
inhabitants of these palaces are exempt 
from misfortune, but I know more or less 
of the history of all these families, and I 
know of none into which sorrow and trou- 
ble have not come." To the rich as well as 
to the poor, patrician as well as plebeian, the 
Word speaks, "Ye shall have tribulation." 
Have you examined this word " tribula- 
tion"? It comes to us from the name of 
that old threshing instrument, the Roman 
flail, a lash of leather, tipped with iron 
spikes. That is the word which describes 
some of those experiences that scourge the 
bare soul, that thresh the heart until it pal- 
pitates with pain. The word of the text, 
" adversity," may not be so strong, but it is 
more inclusive; it embraces all that is or 
seems to be opposed to our welfare or suc- 

91 



IF THOU FAINT 

cess. It comprehends a thousand things 
which, coming into our lives, cause us to 
lose courage, to relax effort, to faint by the 
way. 

Our day of adversity may be a day of 
material reverses. There is always a possi- 
bility that even a prosperous man may fail, 
and there is a probability that about every 
ten years the commerce of the country 
will stagnate, and that about every 
twenty years there will be an alarming 
shrinkage of values. This ten-year expe- 
rience we call hard times. The twenty-year 
experience we call a panic. Mr. William 
Walter Phelps said, just after the panic of 
1873, " What causes panics is the tendency 
in the human heart suddenly to lose its nor- 
mal trust and confidence in men." Strange, 
is it not, that it requires faith to keep the 
world of commerce on its feet? Commerce 
laughs at the word faith, yet the business 
interests of men rest on faith. If a hun- 
dred thousand people in Philadelphia 



IF THOU FAINT 

should suddenly lose faith in the security 
of our banks it would create a panic here 
that would paralyze trade and bring ruin 
to many a substantial institution. 

Whatever may be the explanation of 
these periods of contracted credit and di- 
minished circulation of money, they come, 
and with them come wide-spread suffering 
and loss. Fortunes collapse in an hour. 
Banks break under the strain; unable to 
recall immediately their loans, their doors 
close, and innumerable depositors, manu- 
facturers, and merchants are forced to the 
wall. When a manufacturer sees the work 
of a lifetime come to naught; when a shop- 
keeper is compelled to suspend business; 
when a man's income is so lessened that 
he finds money going out at the spout 
faster than it comes in at the hopper, that 
is his day of adversity. Have you ever 
known what that day means? Has a foe 
consumed your factory in a night? Has 
a strike so crippled you that you were com- 

93 



IF THOU FAINT 

pelled to cancel orders and let your looms 
lie idle for a season? Has an unfounded 
rumor shut the door of discount in your 
face? Has some unforeseen accident de- 
stroyed your prospects, some incident of 
shifting fashion left you stranded? Has 
the dishonesty of a partner or of a clerk 
robbed you of the fruit of your wisdom 
and labor? Then you know. You know 
how the mind is dazed, how the will is 
palsied, how sometimes even faith in God 
grows faint and wicked thoughts rise in 
the burdened brain. Suicide after fail- 
ure — suicide following bankruptcy— sui- 
cide to escape poverty? Foolish! But when 
a man faints he is likely to think foolish 
and wicked thoughts, and likely not to see 
how foolish and wicked they are until God 
brings him to his senses. Many a man has 
confessed that there have been times when 
he thought of taking his own life. One 
such says, " The moment I caught myself 
meditating self-destruction I rebuked my- 

94 



IF THOU FAINT 

self, 'Stop, coward! You are a failure, 
but do not publish yourself a fool."' 
And in the spirit of this self -administered 
rebuke he sought and effected an honor- 
able settlement with his creditors, began 
again to build his fortune, and before long 
had proved that — 

" Noble souls, through dust and heat 
Rise from disaster and defeat 

The stronger, 
And conscious still of the Divine 
Within them, lie on earth supine 

No longer." 

He fainted not in the day of his adversity, 
and he had the help of a spirit as strong 
as his own, who said when reverses came, 
" Sell this home. It is much too large for 
us and it never quite suited me. After 
awhile we will build a house much more 
convenient and much more desirable than 
this." So, like a knight of old, whose 
armor had been rightly buckled on, he 

95 



IF THOU FAINT 

won all he had lost and more, and laid it 
at her feet. 

Our day of adversity may be a time of 
personal or domestic affliction. It is easy 
enough to bear the misfortunes of other 
people. It is wonderful how philosophi- 
cally we can take our neighbors' calamities. 
But if sickness, accident, helplessness, in- 
validism should be our lot, it is a different 
thing. It requires no courage to say to a 
man who is laid on the shelf at forty or 
fifty, "Be brave; be patient." But put 
yourself in his place. Would you be brave 
and patient, submissive and serene ? Would 
you lift your face to those about you and 
say, " It is God's way; His will be done" ? 
Or would you fret and chafe and murmur 
and break your heart about it? I think I 
know some whose strength would not fail 
them then. There would be a struggle, 
it may be a wrestling, as Jacob's with the 
angel, then a white face wet with tears, 
then a prayer, then victory in that prayer 

96 



IF THOU FAINT 

which encompasses all other prayers, " Thy 
Will be done." 

It requires strength quite as rare and as 
divine to keep from fainting when the blow 
falls upon another, if that other be one of 
our own household. Years ago there was 
a family within the parish of a friend of 
mine in New York. The mother became 
insane and was sent to an asylum, where 
she remained several years. The father 
brooded over the sad circumstance, over 
the possibility that their lovely daughters 
might have inherited the infirmity of their 
mother, and in a moment of profound de- 
spondency he sought death by jumping 
from a Fall River steamer into the sea. It 
was at night, and the black waters swal- 
lowed him up. The very day the papers 
announced his suicide the physicians pro- 
nounced his wife cured, and she went back 
to her children. He fainted at the very close 
of his day of adversity. Oh, if he had only 
been brave a little longer! Over against 

97 



IF THOU FAINT 

such a case, think of Charles Lamb. His 
sister, Mary, worn to extreme nervous mis- 
ery by attention to needle-work and de- 
votion to her sick mother, was stricken with 
an acute mania, in which she killed her 
mother. She was committed to an asylum, 
and there she might have remained all her 
life had Charles not pledged himself for 
her safe-keeping. Giving up his dreams 
of a home of his own, he devoted himself 
to his sister, became her companion, kept 
her in his humble apartments in her sane 
intervals, and when the symptoms of her 
malady reappeared, took her to her tem- 
porary retreat. This he did through all 
the years until death stilled his patient 
heart. Is there anything finer in all the 
history of men of letters? They say 
Charles Lamb stammered a little in his 
speech. One thing is certain, his spirit 
never faltered, his constancy never wa- 
vered, he was strong in the day of his ad- 
versity. 

98 



IF THOU FAINT 

Every life, every common life, affords 
abundant opportunity for the display of 
courage. Was ever a man's life abso- 
lutely free from annoyance? Was ever 
a woman's life exempt from perplexity? 
Was ever a family free from emergent 
circumstances, demanding superior wis- 
dom, courage, grace, magnanimity? If 
thou faint, then what? Then the chain 
parts at the moment when most depends 
upon it. The bridge breaks when it bears 
the most precious load. Our day of 
adversity is the day when all the future 
may depend upon the strength of a single 
hour. This is the best part of the whole 
lesson, — it requires a day of adversity to 
reveal our strength. In Browning's " Par- 
acelsus," he writes, "I go to prove my soul." 
So go we all through life, to prove our 
souls, and to prove the efficacy of that upon 
which our souls have fed. We live our 
common lives, our uneventful lives for 

years, growing strong by ordinary acts 

L.*f€ 99 



IF THOU FAINT 

of courage, by the exercise of little hero- 
isms, until some day we face a crisis, and 
then all the stored-up potential energy of 
our souls asserts itself, and " time is con- 
quered and our crown is won." 

Our civil war, a generation ago, made 
heroes of many who otherwise would never 
have risen to anything like moral gran- 
deur. Colonel Shaw, who fell in the attack 
on Fort Wagner, young Cushing, who 
blew up the Confederate ram Albemarle, 
and some of the great commanders them- 
selves grew great in the nation's day of 
adversity. George William Curtis, Wen- 
dell Phillips, and men of that type, who 
fought on their chosen fields as bravely as 
any Sheridan or Meade, grew strong in the 
strenuous strife that preceded the Civil 
War, when the trumpet call of duty and 
danger summoned them to " scorn delights 
and live laborious days." Blessed is the 
voice that awakens us to the purpose of 

life — the only purpose that justifies life, 

100 



IF THOU FAINT 

to love something more than life, to count 
all things but loss for the excellency of the 
knowledge of something superior to life. 

There used to be a young man in Provi- 
dence who seemed utterly indisposed to do 
anything to prove himself more than a 
mere dandy, a sort of walking fashion- 
plate. Because his father was rich he 
drifted, as so many rich men's sons do, 
into uselessness, apathy, atrophy of men- 
tal and moral muscle. One day his father 
called him into the office and said, " My 
son, I have lost everything. I am a poor 
man. You are poor. You must help your- 
self now. I can do nothing more for you." 
Then the young man went to work as any 
other poor man's son might have done. He 
had been half asleep. It took a rude shock 
to arouse him, but he was thoroughly 
awake. He developed strength and ca- 
pacity. There came a time within ten 
years when he handed his father a check, 

and said, " This is what you spent on me 
101 



IF THOU FAINT 

before I tried to do anything. The extra 
thousand is the interest on your invest- 
ment." He lived a serious and successful 
life. It required a day of adversity to 
prove his soul. 

All I have said may seem to relate only 
to things material. The spiritual element 
in strong character, however, is larger than 
appears. The Christian, of all men, is 
strong in the day of his adversity. He has 
meat to eat that the world knows nothing 
of. He feeds on hidden mamia. He has 
access to a secret source of strength. 
Voices speak to him through the silence. 
Visions appear to him through the dark- 
ness. Poverty cannot make him poor, since 
all things are his. Misfortune cannot 
daunt him, for all things are working to- 
gether for his good. Floods cannot sweep 
him from his feet, for invisible hands bear 
him up. Death cannot harm him, for death 
itself is slain. Not all the gloom of all black 

nights can blot out his stars. He walks in 
102 



IF THOU FAINT 

light. He has fellowship with all other 
saints in light, and the Blood, the Blood, 
THE BLOOD, cleanseth him from all 
sin. 



103 



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